Elsewhere (311)
Dan Springer on Seattle’s woke, broke public transport:
At a recent Sound Transit Board meeting, the outgoing CEO summed up the situation. “Our fare collection system relies overwhelmingly on an honour system,” Peter Rogoff said, “and our increasingly acute problem is that our riders aren’t honouring the system.” By one measurement, as many as a staggering 70% of all passengers are free riders. But even that is only an estimate as there is almost no fare enforcement. Sound Transit did away with fare enforcement officers after a study revealed people of colour were disproportionately getting fined.
Sound Transit Board member Claudia Balducci appears untroubled by this trajectory, insisting that “People are feeling more welcome on our system and less afraid to use it because there’s less of a fear of fare enforcement.” Apparently, this is a good thing. The views of local, law-abiding taxpayers, who are subsidising this experiment in social progress, are left to the imagination.
Ben Sixsmith on the steep decline of Swedish education:
Many of the problems [Magnus] Henrekson and [Johan] Wennström diagnose will be familiar to anyone acquainted with the British education system. Grade inflation has masked declining standards, which, in Sweden, manifested themselves with a Wile E Coyote-esque fall down the PISA rankings. […] Sweden has, in recent decades, undergone an extraordinary demographic transformation. As of 2020, a quarter of Swedish residents had a foreign background. In 2015, research by Dr Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren suggested that “the change in pupil demographics due to immigration explains almost a third of the average decline between 2000 and 2012: 19 per cent in mathematical literacy, 28 per cent in reading literacy, and 41 per cent in scientific literacy.”
And Emil Kirkegaard on super-progressive Ontario, where “diversity” trumps standards:
It is now illegal to use a math test to make sure that math teachers know the material they would be teaching.
The motives for removing tests of educator competence soon become apparent. The likely effect on students – including minority students, in whose name competence is being sidelined – is a topic on which readers may care to speculate.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
“People are feeling more welcome on our system and less afraid to use it because there’s less of a fear of fare enforcement.”
Will they feel ‘less afraid’ if the fare-dodgers get the message that crime is okay and start doing other anti-social stuff too?
Will they feel ‘less afraid’ if the fare-dodgers get the message that crime is okay and start doing other anti-social stuff too?
I see you’ve given this more thought than the people paid to think about it.
Heh:
https://www.timworstall.com/2022/04/sir-keir/
It is now illegal to use a math test to make sure that math teachers know the material they would be teaching.
No big deal, in some places not even math is used to teach math.
Get off her back, this is from a sociology professor.
“Woke Ariz. diversity activists falsely accuse black DJ of wearing blackface”
https://nypost.com/2022/04/17/woke-ariz-dei-advocates-falsely-accuse-black-dj-of-wearing-blackface/
disproportionately
Doing some heavy lifting, as our host would say.
Unexpectedly.
OFFS, just give it a rest already.
I am pretty sure that a pantomime man who is pregnant knows how that happened, and that she knows the actual names used by medical types world wide of the naughty bits that were required. A pantomime woman can’t become pregnant* so who the hell gives a rat’s patoot what they think. “Front hole” is disgustingly childish, and “genital opening” also describes a urethral meatus, and I am reasonably sure no one ever gave birth through one.
They just need to stop pandering to these bufoons out of fear they will be “offended” and make them deal with reality. I can imagine the high adventure if one of this lot wound up in an ER in a place that doesn’t do this foolishness, “doc, I have a pain in my front hole”, and the doc starts seeing if you have been shot or have an umbilical hernia.
*(Where did the UKsian term “fall pregnant” come from, it makes it seem like they are all accidents)
My 10th grade geometry teacher was the football coach (white) long long ago. It was widely understood that he had to teach something, and we were to suffer in silence. Fortunately, this is the only one I can think of. Our few black teachers were competent. The idea that we should make everyone illiterate because a portion of the population isn’t measuring up (and isn’t even trying) is so perverse and sick.
These people that are refusing to enforce laws should really visit somewhere that has no laws, like Venezuela or Somalia, and live there for a while. It is not pretty. My friend who worked in Africa told me that to get his mail he had to bribe the mailman, otherwise, oops, no mail has come in! He carried a fake wallet because he got robbed so often. Kidnapping for ransom is a big business in many countries. You can call the movie Captain Phillips a documentary.
My friend who worked in Africa told me that to get his mail he had to bribe the mailman
I had a friends with a similar experience. While working in Africa, they were told to rent a two story home and make the second floor the primary living space. When they went to bed at night they would take any valuables from the ground floor to the second floor. They also prayed that they had payed the two security guards enough for them to do their jobs. Otherwise, the bandits would pay them more and have free reign to break, enter, steal and rob.
There’s a reason why many third world country homes are walled compounds complete with broken bottles cemented into the tops of the walls.
There’s a reason why many third world country homes are walled compounds complete with broken bottles cemented into the tops of the walls.
American liberals would outlaw such security measures as cruel and unusual, not to mention racist.
Unexpectedly.
OFFS, just give it a rest already.
Not entirely unrelated.
So you feel unsafe on transit because they are going to enforce the laws? Would you feel safer if they closed the transit down and you could not get to work? This language of “feeling unsafe” was used in the interview last week of the BLM founder about the 990 charity form, which she found triggering. Somehow, tax laws that apply to everyone were targeting BLM specifically. A charity that doesn’t do any charity should not be classified as a charity. Income that passes through a charity to employees/directors still needs taxes paid on it as income. It is simple grift right out in the open with a protest if we try to enforce the laws as “unfair” somehow.
We work more than medieval peasants? hahahaha that is rich. Not only long hours but dangerous work. If you know nothing it is so freeing–you can just make stuff up with no hesitation.
Victor Barbicane was unavailable for comment.
“There’s a reason why many third world country homes are walled compounds complete with broken bottles cemented into the tops of the walls.” pst314: American liberals would outlaw such security measures as cruel and unusual, not to mention racist.
Not only would the Left in theory not allow security, but in Minneapolis I believe they would in fact not allow steel gates on retail because it would give the appearance of crime. As the brits say, better dead than rude.
“Back off, man, I’m a Scientist…”
Will they feel ‘less afraid’ if the fare-dodgers get the message that crime is okay and start doing other anti-social stuff too?
Notable lack of curiosity from the ideological corner that’s otherwise telling us that misbehavior is on a spectrum, the ideological corner that’s eager to implement “nudges” on the social science theory that small acts of compliance lead to large acts of compliance.
The demographic sun having set on their northern European protestant honor system, the next best thing for Seattle would be a technomonitoring grid, Chinese-style or Amazon-style, facial recognition cameras logging your entry and exit, pinging your phone, charging your account, even updating your location status on Whatstabook. Such a system could give poor people affordable travel precisely between their home and place of work/study, but the city isn’t subsidizing the mobility of idlers and thugs, isn’t giving them free access to new victims at their destination station or within the transit system itself. Of course we’d be terrible people for differentiating that way, and the NY Times would have a series of articles about black teens who hop the barriers in order to go to the library and so on.
This sounds like a description of an honor system that worked ok a few decades ago, but that no longer responds to current requirements because the assumptions upon which it was based are no longer true. But no, this is the new system, this is the solution not the problem, and it’s working precisely as designed.
On fare-dodging.
Mags definitely had my first thoughts, when I read this same article yesterday.
My second thought is that all this is intended to show who’s the boss, and who are the suckers. I think there’s an element to the Left powers-that-be which enjoys using lawbreakers as a *means* of humiliating the rest of us. Promoting fare-dodging is just the mild version—rioters, muggers and burglars are the stronger stuff.
The desire for basic security of body and property is denounced as bourgeois prejudice or ‘white privilege’ or the like, and it must be punished.
“The desire for basic security of body and property is denounced as bourgeois prejudice or ‘white privilege’ or the like, and it must be punished.” Exactly so. And ironically, the non-criminal black population would LOVE to have security. In Chicago, during the BLM protests, hispanic gangs/youth/men (I don’t trust the media’s report) blocked the streets entering their neighborhoods to keep the rioters out since the cops wouldn’t do it. There was one small black neighborhood that did the same.
In other, lighter news, I’ve been peering into the garden, enjoying the sounds of a pleasant afternoon – and some low-key wildlife drama.
First, I spotted a neighbour’s cat, hunched, its tail swishing in anticipation. The cat was staring intently at a blackbird a few metres away on the lawn. However, the bird spotted the cat and buggered off before any pouncing could happen. Then, maybe five seconds later, the cat heard something else moving near the fence where the bird had been. More hunching and swishing. Out pops a fox. The cat was not entirely happy about this development, judging by the hissing and its prompt relocation into our garage.
The fox is now merrily chomping on some leftover chicken.
we should make everyone illiterate because a portion of the population isn’t measuring up
The left keeps mistaking cautionary stories as instruction manuals: 1984, The Trial, Harrison Bergeron…
Fare ambassadors may not get many scofflaws to pay, but they do collect data on them. They ask non-payers for their address, race and gender.
Right, won’t pay, won’t give ID, but will give real address. Foolproof.
Newsreader is not a reader of basic biology books.
:::snicker:::
newsreader: before puberty and after menopause, female hormones are much lower but this does not make them men.
:::snicker:::
She can get a little bawdy after her third drink.
[ Fetches damp tea towel. ]
:::snicker:::
I must say, those walls are an interesting shade of grey.
Real estate listing of note
The metoo movement had a hashtag #metoo but # also means “pound” so it was “pound me too”–love all the illiterates creating unintentional humor.
Transsexual nut job attempts to correct our misconceptions about human biology.
The idea that we should make everyone illiterate because a portion of the population isn’t measuring up (and isn’t even trying) is so perverse and sick.
And, adding insult to injury, guess who always gets punted ahead of the line to scarf up all the grants and scholarships, too. Was a gal in my uni classes who applied for and took most of them, being one of the few poc in our group. She came from a wealthy family and used the money to go to Aruba mid-semester, missing many classes. Literally did not GAF.
This chap informs us we shouldn’t define woman because gender is a system of oppression, as if we hadn’t been told countless times by others.
Also because it would eliminate him from the category, but that is in no way his motive, I’m sure.
Was a gal in my uni classes who applied for and took most of them, being one of the few poc in our group.
I hear ya. When “the backpack of privelege” first started making the rounds in schools, a recently divorced (mother of four, dead beat dad) friend’s kid had a POC friend who lived in one the country’s most expensive neighbourhoods in a 7,000 sq. ft. house, drove her own two year old BMW M3, and dressed in expensive designer clothes. POC friend didn’t have to unpack anything, while friend’s kid was put through the wringer.
Some animals are more equal than others.
Hey everybody! Is everything still going to hell?
[ reads last dozen posts ]
Yep! Anyway, see ya around!
guess who always gets punted ahead of the line to scarf up all the grants and scholarships, too
In my engineering undergrad program there were full-ride scholarships offered only to women. There were twelve women in my cohort on such scholarships; three continued into second year, but not on scholarship as they were unable to maintain the 80% average necessary. The other nine transferred into easier programs – mostly biology – having had 25% of their university education paid for by the faculty they’d just left after only one year.
Meanwhile, a fellow who consistently pulled a 91% average was working a part-time job to help cover tuition, as 91% wasn’t enough to qualify for any scholarships available to him as a white man.
It may not be fair, but in private when there are no commissars about, everyone I know in engineering over the last twenty years has admitted that they try to avoid hiring women engineers or placing them on critical projects because they know they’re overwhelmingly likely to be mediocrities shoved through the system as mascots.
In my engineering undergrad program there were full-ride scholarships offered only to women. There were twelve women in my cohort on such scholarships; three continued into second year, but not on scholarship as they were unable to maintain the 80% average necessary. The other nine transferred into easier programs – mostly biology – having had 25% of their university education paid for by the faculty they’d just left after only one year.
And how many of them got married after graduation and never made professional use of those degrees?
And how many of them got married after graduation and never made professional use of their degrees.
Possibly not professional use, but some use all the same. I read somewhere (can’t find it now) that quite a few woman use their degree to bag a higher earning partner than if they had spent the previous years saying “Do you want fries with that?”. Who would think women could be so devious and calculating?
“Who would think women could be so devious and calculating?” I have a theory that for women the deviousness is so below the surface they are not aware of it whereas men do their computing of odds and risks in the open so they can tell you what they have been thinking. I think the decline of men in college relative to women (60% college is women) is because men have done the calculation of risk vs cost (including the 4 years) and said it isn’t worth it.
Women in engineering: is it that women can’t do the work? There is an aspect of the very smartest being men whether you look at IQ itself or math scores. So that would be MIT. But also, engineering is tedious (I took a bunch of engineering classes in college and hang out with a bunch of them) and requires intense focus for hours and days. Women have preferences that lead them in other directions. Encouraging women to do engineering both wastes their time and takes up slots in programs. This obsession with exact quotas in every field is sick. Of course if women dominate in veterinary or med school or pharmacy, no problem.
oops: reward vs cost. sorry
It may not be fair, but in private when there are no commissars about, everyone I know in engineering over the last twenty years has admitted that they try to avoid hiring women engineers or placing them on critical projects because they know they’re overwhelmingly likely to be mediocrities shoved through the system as mascots.
In software companies where I have worked, the women mostly either work on the testing side (where also worked a disproportionate number of gay men) or in the softer requirements gathering area sometimes referred to as systems engineering. Which itself is a much broader field not known (to me anyway) as being thick with women. Or that’s my perception anyway.
Women coders were sometimes a bit of a mess who then fell back to testing but there were a few that I worked with who were quite good. One was one of the best conceptual thinkers/designers/leaders that I ever worked for or with. She was married and grew up in a family of high-T boys who became cops and similar.
One other thing regarding “mascots”… It’s really not such a bad thing. When I first started working, most design meetings had a technical writer/secretary attending who was almost always a woman. This fell off in the cost-cutting days of the early/mid 1990’s but later on, as more women were working in testing and development I noticed something about our meetings. Especially as I was spending more and more time with the higher end technical leadership types that were overwhelmingly male…and cosmopolitan. When a meeting had at least one woman in it, there was significantly more civility and thus more progress made. Personally, I get a lot out of meetings where many different ideas are getting tossed around but sometimes it turns into (subconscious) dick measuring and things go down hill. The presence of just one woman, one who doesn’t even have to have full understanding of the topic, keeps things more on the rails.
quite a few woman use their degree to bag a higher earning partner than if they had spent the previous years saying “Do you want fries with that?”. Who would think women could be so devious and calculating?
We called it “working on an MRS degree”.
I read somewhere (can’t find it now) that quite a few woman use their degree to bag a higher earning partner than if they had spent the previous years saying “Do you want fries with that?”.
I believe you are correct: The more educated a man is, the more educated he wants his spouse to be–so that they have more in common and so that she will be better able to educate their children. (And in addition I believe there is some social stigma against marrying too “far down”, much as my fellow students openly despised anyone who dated a “townie”.)
We called it “working on an MRS degree”.
We called it that back in the 70’s when I was working on my degree. Saying that today would get you called into the Dean’s office, of course.
I recall some STEM professors who, while fully supportive of women wanting to pursue STEM careers, were also aware that a large fraction would turn out to be on the MRS degree track. And those professors worried about this because they only had limited time to mentor students and preferred to give that time to students who were serious about becoming scientists and engineers and mathematicians. I remember friends and professors who expressed disappointment about female STEM majors we knew who abandoned their fields of study to marry and have children. Some of them, in “proper” feminist thinking, thought that having kids was a poor life choice, while others merely lamented the waste of limited academic resources.
Encouraging women to do engineering both wastes their time and takes up slots in programs.
I agree to some extent, with three provisos: First, some women do pursue those careers, in which case their educations are not wasted. Second, other women return to those fields after their children are out of school, in which again their educations are not waste. Third, such education will benefit the women’s children–and the wider community to the extent that they share their knowledge with other children, parents, PTA’s, etc. (Just as I absorbed some of my father’s knowledge of industrial logistics/production scheduling, I learned a lot about art and music from my mother.) Fourth, as I said in the previous comment, it makes them more valuable marriage candidates and more valuable neighbors.
three provisos
Make that four provisos. Is it time for the Spanish Inquisition and their expanding list of chief weapons?
One of the curious aspects of medical training is that the number of new doctors is limited by the availability of residency slots and these are totally determined by gover funding in the US. After med school you cannot practice med until you have the residency. To the extent that women get a medical degree and then either work fewer hours (common) or drop out to have a family (not quite as common but not rare), they are creating a doctor shortage.
Encouraging women to do engineering both wastes their time and takes up slots in programs.
I agree to some extent, with (four) provisos
None of those are good reasons for expending limited resources advertising engineering to women and subsidizing their educations therein. They’re like the arguments I’ve seen that the Apollo program wasn’t a waste of public money because we learned a lot about software engineering: it presumes that you couldn’t have done the same thing a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper by simply allowing people to make their own choices.
Good thing you Canadians didn’t piss away any money going to the moon, eh? Certainly you lot wouldn’t waste any of your funds to train space-going people that would have to ride on other nation’s ways to orbit?
None of those are good reasons for expending limited resources advertising engineering to women and subsidizing their educations therein.
But do consider that someone with an actual degree in biology will make a better teacher.
Also: Undergraduate STEM education acts as a winnowing-out process. The totally unqualified students quickly switch to less demanding majors, while students with more aptitude complete their degrees but do not pursue postgraduate degrees because they are not confident that they are good enough to have successful careers as research scientists. Bear in mind that an ability to do coursework well does not correlate perfectly with an ability to do research well. (I have noticed quite a few successful programmers with undergraduate degrees in physics, chemistry, and math.) And some may find, after four years of undergraduate study and increasing contact with the world of working scientists, that they are simply no longer as interested in becoming scientists. There are many reasons why a sincerely interested student ends up changing career paths. But all those students who switch careers may, in one way or another, make some use of their education. Isaac Asimov was, by his own admission, a mediocre research scientist, but he was a very good teacher and explainer. I knew a number of good school teachers with STEM degrees.
To the extent that women get a medical degree and then either work fewer hours (common) or drop out to have a family (not quite as common but not rare), they are creating a doctor shortage.
Wow. Thank heavens that doesn’t happen in the nhs.
in Minneapolis I believe they would in fact not allow steel gates on retail because it would give the appearance of crime.
I’m late to the party, but I figured I’d confirm that Mpls City Council overturned the ban on security shutters in December 2020 following the mostly-peaceful protests. I can also confirm that most businesses on Lake Street continue to maintain the impromptu mutual-aid groups they formed when they realized that the cops were never going to protect them.
“Second, other women return to those fields after their children are out of school, in which again their educations are not waste.”
This one falls afoul of the simple fact that spending more than two years not working in the field often leaves you without current knowledge.
An “Education” degree (BA, MA, and PhD) is the Participation Trophy of Higher Education. Don’t get me started on the outright fraud of BS and MS “degrees” in Education.
spending more than two years not working in the field often leaves you without current knowledge.
That is true, but such people seem to be able to recover sufficiently to become good high school teachers.